A Ship Made of Paper

[1]

Daniel and Hampton were paired by chance and against their wishes.They were not friends—Hampton did not particularly like Daniel, and Daniel had every reason to avoid being alone with Hampton.But Daniel’s girlfriend or partner or whatever he was supposed to call her, Kate, Kate went home to relieve the baby-sitter who was minding her daughter, and Hampton’s wife, there was no ambigu-ity there, his wife, Iris, with whom Daniel was fiercely in love, had gone home to look after their son.Daniel and Hampton stayed behind to search for a blind girl, a heartsick and self-destructive blind girl who had run away from today’s cocktail party, either to get lost or to be found, no one was sure.

The searchers, fourteen in all, were each given a Roman candle—whoever found

the lost girl was to fire the rocket into the sky, so the others would know—and each of the pairs was assigned a section of the property in which to look for Marie.

“Looks like you and me,”Daniel said to Hampton, because he had to say something.

Hampton barely responded and he continued to only minimally acknowledge

Daniel’s nervous chatter as they walked away from the mansion through an untended expanse of wild grass that soon led into a dense wood of pine, locust, maple, and oak.Aside from the contrast of their color—Daniel was white, Hampton black—the two men were remarkably similar in appearance.They were both in their mid-thirties, an inch or so over six feet tall, broad-shouldered, reasonably fit.They were even dressed similarly, in khaki pants, white shirts, and blue blazers, though Daniel’s jacket was purchased at Macy’s, and Hampton’s had been sewn specially for him by a Chinese tailor in the city.

Two years after he was kicked down the stairs ofhis apartment building in NewYork City, which shattered his wrist, chipped his front tooth, and, as he himself put it, broke his heart, Daniel Emerson is back in his hometown, driving Ruby, his girlfriend’s four-year-old daughter, to her day care center, called My LittleWooden Shoe.The drive is ten or fifteen minutes, depending on the weather, and though Daniel is not Ruby’s father, nor her stepfather, it usually falls to him to take the little girl in.Daniel cannot understand how she can so willingly and unfailingly absent herselffrom the beginnings ofher daughter’s day;Ruby’s mother, Kate Ellis, cannot bear to rise early in the morning, nor can she bear the thought ofhaving to deal with Melody, orTammy, Keith, Tamara, Grif-fin, Elijah, Avery, Stephanie, Joel, Tess, Chantal, Dylan, or any ofthe otherWooden Shoers, not to mention their fathers and their mothers, a few ofwhom Daniel knew thirty-two years ago in this very town, when he was Ruby’s age.

It’s fine with Daniel.He welcomes the chance to do fatherly things with the little girl, and those ten morning minutes with dear little four-year-old Ruby, with her deep soulful eyes, and the wondrous things she sees with them, and her deep soulful voice, and the precious though not entirely memorable things she says with it, and the smell ofbaby sham-poo and breakfast cereal filling the car, that little shimmering capsule of time is like listening to cello music in the morning, or watching birds in a flutter ofindustry building a nest, it simply reminds you that even if God is dead, or never existed in the first place, there is, nevertheless, something tender at the center ofcreation, some meaning, some pur-pose and poetry.He believes in parental love with the fervency ofa man who himself was not loved, and those ten minutes with Ruby every weekday morning, before he drops her offat My LittleWooden Shoe and then drives over to his office, where he runs a poorly paying, uneventful country law practice, in the fairly uneventful town ofLeyden, one hun-dred miles north ofNewYork City, those six hundred sweet seconds are his form ofworship, and the temperamental eight-year-old black Saab is his church.

Or was, actually, because, unfortunately, this is no longer the case.

The drive is still ten minutes, Ruby is still snugly strapped in her child safety seat in the back ofthe car, her sturdy little body encased in lilac overalls, her short-fingered, square hands holding a box ofraisins and a box ofgrape juice, and today she is commenting on the familiar land-marks they pass—the big kids’school, the abandoned apple orchard where the wizened old trees wreathed in autumn morning mist are so scarily bent, the big yellow farmhouse where there is always some sort ofyard sale, the massive pasture where every July the county fair assem-bles, with its cows and snow cones, Ferris wheels and freaks—but today it is all Daniel can do to pay the slightest bit ofattention to Ruby, because his mind is seized, possessed, and utterly filled by one repeating ques-tion:Will Iris be there?

Daniel has been carrying the unwieldy weight ofthis desire for months now, and so far his behavior has been impeccable.When it comes to Iris the rules he has made for himself are simple:look but don’t touch, long for but don’t have, think but don’t say.All he wants to do is be in the same room with her, see what she is wearing, see by her eyes ifshe has slept well, exchange a few words, make her smile, hear her say his name.

Until recently, it was a matter ofchance whether their paths would cross.Iris’s deliveries and pickups ofNelson were helter-skelter, one day she’d have him there at eight o’clock, and the next at nine-thirty—it all depended on her class schedule at Marlowe College, where she was a graduate student, as well as Nelson’s morning moods, which were un-predictable.But now, suddenly, she is exactly on Daniel’s schedule most days, herVolvo station wagon pulls into the day care center’s parking lot atvirtually the same time as his.He wonders ifit’s deliberate on her part.He has reached the point ofthinking so often ofher, ofso often go-ing out ofhis way to pass her house, oflooking for her wherever he goes, that it’s become difficult for him to believe that Iris is not thinking, at least some ofthe time, ofhim.

Daniel pulls into My LittleWooden Shoe’s parking lot and sees her car, already in its customary spot, directly facing the playground, with its redwood climbing structures, sandbox, and swings.He is so glad to know that she’s here that he laughs.

“What’s so funny?”Ruby asks, as he unsnaps her from her car seat, lifts her up.Her questions are blunt;he guesses one day she’ll be a tough customer.

“Nothing.”

“Then why are you laughing?”She smiles.Her milk teeth are tinged brown:as a baby she was sometimes allowed to fall asleep with a bottle of juice in her crib and the sugar wore away her enamel.Now the dentist says the best thing to do is just let them fall out.Yet the brown, lusterless teeth—along with her slight stoutness, and her ruddy complexion— make her look poor and rural, like a child in the background ofa Brueghel painting.

“Just crazy thoughts,”Daniel says.“How about you?Any crazy thoughts lately?”

“I want to go to Nelson’s house after day care.”

“That’s not a very crazy thought.”

She thinks about this for a moment.“I want to sleep over.”

“You never know,”Daniel says.He swoops her up into his arms, turns her upside down.She clutches her knapsack, afraid that her snack and box ofjuice will slip out.Daniel restrains himself from suggesting to Ruby:Ask him, ask Nelson if you can spend the night.

Today, Iris is wearing plaid cotton pants that are a little too short for her and a bulky green sweater that is a little too large.Her clothes are rarely beautiful, and it has often struck Daniel that Iris herselfmay have no idea that she is lovely to look at.Her dark hair is cut short, she wears no makeup, no jewelry, everything about her says,I’m plain, don’t bother looking at me.Maybe he has drifted into the periphery ofher life because somehow in the grand design ofthings—and this private, pulverizing love he feels makes him believe in grand designs—he is the man who must awaken her to her own beauty.Is there some casual, defused way he can say to her:Do you have an idea how lovely you are?

He wants to hold her in the moonlight.He wants to stroke her shoulder until she is fast asleep.

She is crouched next to Nelson, whispering something in his ear.He loves seeing her with her son, the intimacy ofit pierces him.She seems a perfect mother:calm, present, able to adore without consuming.Nel-son is a handsome boy, strong, bigger than most ofthe children in the day care, several shades lighter than his mother.There is something regal and disdainful in him.He has the air ofsomeone forced to live around peo-ple who don’t understand the full extent ofhis excellence.He nods im-patiently as his mother speaks to him, and when his eyes light upon Ruby he bolts and the two children greet each other wildly, almost in a bur-lesque ofhappiness, holding hands, jumping up and down.Iris heaves a sigh and stands up, shakes her head.

“Sorry about that,”Daniel says.

”Those two,”says Iris.

”It looked like you were giving him some last-minute instructions,”

Daniel says.

Iris looks around to make certain she will not be overheard.“There was a note in his cubby from Linda.It seems he hit one ofthe other chil-dren yesterday.”

“Oh well, these teachers have a way ofcatastrophizing everything.”

“I just don’t want the oneAfrican-American child in the whole school to be the one committing little acts ofviolence.”

She never refers to race around him, and Daniel wonders if her saying this now is a way ofinviting him in, or pushing him back.

“Do you have time for a cup ofcoffee or something?”he asks her.

She looks at her watch.“I’ve got a meeting with my thesis advisor in halfan hour.”

“That’s nothing compared to the tight schedule of an unsuccessful, small-town lawyer,”he says.

“Where would be fast?”Iris says.

”The Koffee Kup.The coffee’s so bad they spell it with a K.And the lighting is so bad, it’s impossible to sit there longer than fifteen minutes.

I’ll race you there.”

He drives behind her, not wanting to risk letting her out ofhis sight, and feeling the juvenile, slightly demented thrill oflooking at the back ofher head, her hands on the steering wheel.A Marlowe College sticker is on her rear window.The sight ofit ignites a little fizz ofpity and tenderness in him—at thirty-three, she’s new to Marlowe’s graduate program, and her fixing that sticker to her car connotes some desire for definition, a will to belong, or so it seems to him.She maintains the exact thirty-five-mile-per-hour speed limit all the way to Leyden’s miniature Broadway, and when she pulls into a parking spot in front ofthe diner she uses her turn signal.Such devotion to the rules, such commitment to the princi-ples ofhighway safety—it would be ludicrous to believe that a woman like her could ever entertain the possibility ofsome sexual adventure, of entering into the grim geometry ofinfidelity.

He is astonished by his own ardor.He is like a man who suddenly discovers he can sing, who one day opens his mouth in the shower and mu-sic bursts out ofhim, each note dipped in gold.But the timing is wrong.

He is thirty-six years old, he has commitments, and until now he gave no more credence to the transforming, commanding power oflove than he did to the myth ofAtlantis.Yet this desire, this overwhelming need to look at Iris—who he is convinced is not only beautiful but beautiful in a way that only he can fully appreciate, a beauty somehow designed espe-cially for his eyes—is something he has allowed himself to succumb to.

What harm, really, can it do?

Daniel wants to do no harm, nor does he want any harm to come to him.In fact, he has moved back to Leyden, home ofhis bucolic, mediocre childhood, leaving a prosperous career back in NewYork City, largely because he had lived for months with the fear that either one or severalAfrican-Americans were going to beat him within an inch ofhis life, or perhaps go that extra inch and kill him.It was not an idle, racist fantasy;he had been told flat out that his time was near.He had unsuc-cessfully defended a black man accused ofdealing drugs, and on the day ofthe sentencing, a short, mild-looking black man in a blue suit, a white turtleneck, and a diamond earring whispered to Daniel,“Keep your eyes open.You know what I’m saying?”Within a week, Daniel’s own dread had wound itselfaround him so tightly that he couldn’t see a person of color—a cleaning woman, a bus driver, acrobats and break-dancers in Washington Square Park, a bunch ofhigh school kids horsing around on the subway platform—without thinking that this one, or that one, might be an emissary from his furious client.“I’m afraid ofblack people,”he fi-nally said to Kate.It was the most shaming thing he had ever told another person.He felt like an insect, a fool.Kate, for her part, was entirely sym-pathetic.And to think you defended that fucking idiot for free,she kept on say-ing.Did anything she said make him feel better? He can no longer remember.He spent another two months crossing the street to get away from suspicious-looking blacks, spending a fortune in cab fares, exhaust-ing himself with gasps and double takes, feeling weak and loathsome, and they caught up with him anyhow.

Daniel and Iris walk into the Koffee Kup together.Ofthe three breakfast spots in Leyden, this is the oldest, and the core clientele are na-tives ofLeyden.It’s a simple, sparsely decorated storefront, with a high ceiling and overhead fans, a row ofdark wooden booths, a long Formica counter, and a scattering oftables up front.The women who run it—country women with checkered domestic lives and a penchant for teas-ing and wisecracks—open for business at six in the morning, when the truckers, contractors, and farmworkers gather for ham and eggs.Now that Leyden is changing, with more and more city people moving in, there are fancier and, to be honest about it, better places to have break-fast, but Daniel still frequents the Double K, where his parents took him for his first restaurant meal.He holds the door open for Iris, knowing there will surely be people here whom he knows, people to whom he will have to nod, or greet, or perhaps even speak with.Kate, however, will certainly not be among them.It is not yet nine o’clock and she is probably still sleeping, or ifshe is awake she isn’t out ofbed yet.She is probably pouring herselfa cup ofViennese roast from the thermos he al-ways places at her bedside before leaving with Ruby in the morning.

Daniel and Iris sit at a table near the front window.The youngest of the Koffee Kup waitresses, ponytailed and pierced Becky, brings Daniel a coffee and a glass ofwater, which is what she always does as soon as he sits down.She brings nothing for Iris and seems, in fact, not to register her presence.

“I think we’re going to need another coffee here, Becky,”Daniel says.

Becky looks momentarily confused, and then she turns and looks at Iris as ifseeing her for the first time.

“Oh, sorry,”she says, her voice flat.

”Do you have decaf?”Iris says brightly, smiling.She has a space between her front teeth.

“Do you want decaf?”Becky asks.She heaves a sigh.

”That would be great,”Iris says to Becky.

What Daniel does not see:Iris’s foot is tapping nervously.The waitress’s slight stubbornness about the decafis potential trouble.All Iris wants is for it to go unnoticed;the small rudeness is the sort ofthing that her husband would be fuming about, ifhe were here right now.He’s thin-skinned, his radar for slights is always on, always scanning the social horizon for incoming missiles.Iris has sat with him in innumerable restaurants while he has glared at the waitress, gestured impatiently at the waiter, sent back the soup, sent back the fish, asked to speak to the manager, and let it be known with a few choice words that he was no one to be trifled with.And it’s not just in restaurants that this highly tuned sensitivity to insult turns what Iris always hopes will be a simple outing into a kind ofdespairing war against prejudice.At aYankees game when the usher asks a second time to check his tickets, in the first-class cabin on a flight to Hawaii when the stewardess forgets to bring him an extra pillow and then tells him there are no more macadamia nuts, at the Jaguar dealership where the salesman will not let them take the car out for a test drive without xeroxing his license and taking an imprint ofhis American Express card.

“I guess they’re brewing up a fresh pot ofthe decaf,”Daniel says.“Are you going to have time?”

They talk about the children, and Daniel feels the minutes ticking away;it’s like feeling himself bleed to death.He wonders, wildly, ifIris remembers that he is not really Ruby’s father.How can he bring that up without it seeming small-minded? Iris’s coffee has still not arrived, and she checks her watch, looks quickly over her shoulder at Becky, who is at the far end ofthe counter leisurely chatting to an old man in a tractor cap and suspenders.

“I’m having such a hard time in school,”Iris says.“And I can’t be late for this meeting with my advisor.He already thinks I’m a flake.”

“He can’t think that.”

“I’m getting my doctorate inAmerican Studies, and I can’t even figure out my thesis.I keep changing it.The thing is, I really want to get my de-gree, but another part ofme would be happy to stay in school forever.It’s so much fun, and it’s not like I’ve got to put bread on my family table.”

“When I first met you, you were thinking aboutThurgood Marshall.”

“That was my husband’s idea.Marshall was sort ofa friend ofhis family.Well, there have been many changes oftopic since then.God.All this time offfrom school, all this marriage and motherhood, it’s sort of gummed up my brain.I’m in a state ofconstant confusion.”

“I never liked school,”Daniel says, though it’s not true.He’s not sure why he said it.

“I like school.I just don’t like my brain right now.”Her laugh is soft, heartrending.She pushes the sleeves ofher sweater up, showing her ar-ticulated forearms, dark and hairless.“I better get out ofhere,”she says.

“This is ridiculous.You didn’t even get your coffee.”

“It’s no big deal.”Her heart is racing;how long will it take him to figure out that the waitress is deliberately not serving her?“Anyhow, you said the coffee’s not very good here.”

“Well, at least drink the water, the water’s excellent.”

Outside, they linger for a moment.“Becky was weird in there,”

Daniel says.

“Becky?”Iris can feel it coming;he is going to declare himself outraged on her behalf.He is going to be her prince in shining liberal armor.

“Yes, our waitress,”he says.He feels a quickening, he has found a way to say what he has wanted to say for so long.“The thing about Becky is she’s weird around beautiful women.”There.It’s said.He makes a helpless ges-ture, as ifhe were tossing up his life, seeing where it would land.He doesn’t dare look at her.“Because you are.So extraordinarily beautiful.”

“Oh.”She says it as ifhe were a child who has come up with something adorable.“Well, thanks.”

“I still owe you a cup ofcoffee,”he says.“How about tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow’s Saturday,”she says.

He watches her as she hurries toward her car.Her generous bottom, her funny little run.The sky is dark blue and the autumn sun is warm and steady, as ifpromising that winter will never arrive.A slow breeze moves down the street, carrying the perfume ofthe slowly dying leaves, a nearby field’s last mowing, the river.What can the world do to you with its beauty? Can it lift you up on its shoulders, as ifyou were a hero, can it whoopsie-daisy you up into its arms as ifyou were a child? Can it goad your timid heart, urge you on to finally seize what you most shamefully desire?Yes, yes, all that and more.The world can crush you with its beauty.

Back in the city, Daniel’s firm had offices that took three floors in a styl-ishArt Deco building on LexingtonAvenue, with astrological mosaics in the lobby, and arte moderne numerals over the filigreed brass elevator doors.But here in Leyden his place ofwork is as humble as his practice, two rooms in a wood-framed building near the center oftown.It’s an ungraceful, stolid sort ofbuilding, the architectural equivalent ofa schoolmarm, a nun, a maiden aunt;it once had been, in fact, a board-inghouse, from1925to1960,owned by two musical, free-thinking German sisters, and run exclusively for local unmarried women—gen-teel shop-women, schoolteachers, and a woman named Marjorie Inger-soll, who had a small private income that she supplemented by giving painting and drawing lessons, and whose cheerful landscapes, with their agitated skies and roller coaster hills and valleys, are still displayed along the stairways and in the hallways.Now, the house has been turned into an office complex, where Daniel rents a two-room suite, where century-old locust trees scrape their branches against the windows at the wind’s slightest provocation.Eight hundred and fifty dollars a month, which back in the city would get him thirty square feet in Staten Island.

Daniel climbs the back stairs to the second floor, so lost in thought as he replays and what-ifs this morning’s meeting with Iris that he forgets today’s first appointment will be with his parents, who have announced that they wish to review their last will and testament.Daniel is not their lawyer;the meager bits oflegal business they have generated throughout their adult lives have been handled by one ofthe town’s old-timers, Owen Fitzsim-mons, an ectoplasmic old sort with funereal eyes and icy hands.Fitzsim-mons was a longtime chiropractic patient ofDaniel’s father’s, and while Mrs.Fitzsimmons was alive, the two couples took golfing vacations to-gether to Phoenix and San Diego, formed a wine-tasting club that was quite a success in Leyden in the late1970s, and one summer traveled together to Scotland and Ireland, where they stayed in castles, golfed, and came back home percolating with plans to retire and expatriate to what they continu-ally referred to as“the British Isles.”When his parents called for an ap-pointment, Daniel had wondered ifthere’d been some falling-out with Fitzsimmons, though that seemed to him unlikely.Daniel found Fitzsim-mons both vain and dour, a chilly man in a worn blue blazer with some mys-terious crest over the pocket.But then Daniel’s parents—Carl and Julia Emerson—were no less dour, and even shared with Fitzsimmons whatever circulatory difficulty it is that prevents one’s hands, fingers, and particularly fingertips from getting the blood flow necessary to keep them at a mam-malian temperature.Because their work entailed touching people, both of them were continually blowing on their hands to try to warm them.

Daniel’s secretary is named SheilaAlvarez.She is a stout, round-faced woman.She wraps her dark braids so they sit like a woven basket on top ofher head, and she wears complicated necklaces with tiny stones, bits of seashell, and pantheistic amulets.The least alluring ofthree daughters, she is one ofthose women who get stuck with the task ofcaring for ag-ing, suffering parents, and when they died she was all alone in the world, and too emotionally spent to do anything about it.She has a far-flung net-work ofwomen friends, with whom she is continually on the phone.She is, however, unfailingly efficient, and since getting ill last winter, when Daniel not only protected her job during a long convalescence but also paid for the hospital charges that the insurance company didn’t cover, she is fiercely loyal to Daniel, protective and vigilant, as ifthe office were un-der continual attack, or threat ofattack, though, ofcourse, it is not:it’s just a humdrum rural practice, with one criminal case for every ten real estate closings, and even the criminal cases rarely come to trial.

This practice barely affords him a decent living—in fact, he’s not really clearing much more than he pays Sheila—and it is as close to his for-mer, sleek professional life as a campfire is to a blast furnace, and sometimes it is remarkable to Daniel not only that he has chosen this quiet, country life but that he finds it so agreeable.True, leaving New York was more like fleeing NewYork, but he could have chosen some-place with more people, better cases, more money to be made.Yet here he is, right back in Leyden, which, for years, every time he left it—dur-ing prep school, college, law school, after holidays, summers, the funeral ofan old grade school buddy—he always assumed he was seeing it for the very last time.Kate, upon agreeing to move to Leyden with him, sensed that Daniel wanted to be near his aging parents, and, despite her misgiv-ings, she didn’t see how she could prevent him from fulfilling his filial du-ties.Though every story he ever told her about his parents made them seem as ifthey were monsters ofreserve, two towering touch-me-nots who treated Daniel as ifhe were not so much their son as their charge, one ofthose boys from a nineteenth-century novel, a boisterous nephew left behind by a floozy sister, an orphan whose parents have disappeared undermysterious circumstances in India, a little human mess it had fallen to them to mop up.

Sheila hangs up the phone as Daniel closes the outer door ofhis office behind him.She is quick to end what was obviously a personal call, but her smile is warm and unrepentant.

“Everything okay here?”he asks.

She puts a short, bejeweled finger over her peachy lips, and then quickly scrawls a note to him on a yellow Post-it.“Your parents are wait-ing for you inside,”it says.

In truth, he has forgotten they were coming, and hedoesfeel a little dismayed, but he exaggerates his feelings to amuse Sheila—his face a stark, staring mask ofmock horror.He crumples the note, his eyes dart back and forth, as ifhe were about to bolt.What am I going to do?

His lips soundlessly form the words.His hand goes to his throat.Sheila laughs, also soundlessly, and then she leans back in her high-tech swivel-ing office chair, and the contraption tilts back so abruptly that it seems as ifshe is going to tip over, which elicits a scream ofshock and delight from her.

Great,Daniel mimes to her, and then he strolls into his inner office, where Carl and Julia are seated on the sofa, but leaning forward, their heads tilted, looks ofconcern on their faces.

“What was that scream?”Daniel’s father asks.

”Sheila,”Daniel says.“Tipping over.”He greets his parents with affection, which he presents to them mildly, delicately, with the kind ofreserve you expect in a funeral home or in an intensive care unit.He kisses his mother gently on the cheek, shakes his father’s hand while keeping his own eyes down.He sits at his desk, runs his hands over its clear, waxed surface.

“So what’s the problem with your wills?”Daniel asks, wanting to take charge ofthe conversation.The last thing he wants to do is to answer their bread-and-butter inquiries about Kate and Ruby, neither ofwhom they have bothered to try to know very well, but whom they would be likely to ask after, for the sake ofform.

Carl and Julia exchange nervous looks, openly, as ifthey are communicating over a client who is facedown on the chiropractic table.

Daniel, for his part, pretends not to notice.When he was young, he was curious to discover what lay behind his parents’ceaseless secrecy and re-serve, what horrible little habits they might conceal, what gooey sexual secrets, what hidden morsels ofbiography.Maybe they carried some deep malice, perhaps they weren’t really married, perhaps he was adopted, maybe his father was a quack, maybe his mother ended every evening in bed sniffing at a rag drenched in ether, and just maybe they werefrom outer space.It’s puzzling to him how his curiosity has per-sisted, but now he fears that ifthey were ever to suddenly confide in him he might want to clap his hands over his ears.It’s too late for that.His ef-fort has been to make peace with the people who raised him, the creaky couple who always winced ifhe raised his voice, the punctual pair who had a clock in every room and who marked the passing ofthe hours with their sighs, their meals, theirTV programs.Ifthey were to show him something different now, it would upset that peace, the treaty would be nullified, he would have to start to try to understand them, and he did not care to.

Somehow, in their little exchange ofglances, it is decided that Carl will present the problem to Daniel.“We’ve made some changes in our will,”he says, in his calm, authoritative voice.“And Owen strongly ad-vised us to go over them with you.”

“Okay,”Daniel says, stretching the word out.He is looking closely at his father, imagining himself looking like him in forty years.Worse things could happen.Carl is fit, leaner than Daniel is now.His blue eyes are sharp beneath spiky, emphatic eyebrows.There is something strange in the intensity ofhis father’s gaze.When he looks you in the eye it doesn’t feel like frankness, it feels like aggression.His hair is still dark and abun-dant, his posture a living advertisement for his particular branch ofthe medical arts.He looks scrubbed, well rested, prosperous—pleased with life, and pleased with himself.Julia, however, is starting to age rapidly.

She has become frail, a little trembly, and her once imperious features look surprised by her own onrushing mortality.

“Well,”Carl continues,“as you know, in the past three or four years your mother and I have become much more involved in theWindsor County Raptor Center, over in Bailey Point.”

“No,”Daniel says.“As a matter offact, I didn’t know.”Raptor Center?

And then it hits him:his father’s eyes are those ofa hawk, an eagle, a falcon.

“Yes, you did,”Julia says, a little accusingly.“Don’t you recall my showing you pictures ofyour father and me at the center? Father had a falcon on his arm?”Her throat seems as ifit were irritated by the work oftalking, and she coughs into her hand.

“You know me, Mom.I have a terrible memory.But I do know the place.An old friend ofmine from fifth grade runs it.”

“Lionel Sanderson,”Carl says, with a smile.

”Right,”says Daniel.“How is he?”

“Overworked, but what dedicated man is not?”

“He remembers you, ofcourse,”Julia adds.“He often recalls the nice afternoons after school at our house.”

Daniel is both stunned and amused by the untruthfulness ofthis.First ofall, he and Lionel were never close friends and did not spend their time after school in each other’s company.And secondly,no onecame to the Emerson house after school, or on weekends, or during the summer, or any time at all, except to quickly call for Daniel and be on their way.His parents found the racket and clutter ofboys unbearable.The house itself was a meticulous and unfriendly place, and the pictures on the walls were ofskulls and spinal cords, giving the place a kind ofpermanent Hal-loween ambiance—a chilling, childless Halloween.But Daniel knows better than to challenge their take on the past—he has tried it before when other inconsistencies have arisen, and it has caused hard feelings.

“Well, it’s not that we have any plans to be kicking the bucket,”Carl says,“but we wanted you to know that we’ve decided to leave the bulk ofour estate to the Raptor Center.Right now, the whole operation is squeezed onto twenty-five acres, and there’s not a building on the prop-erty that doesn’t need some major repair.What they would like to do—”

“Need to do,”Julia says.

“Is double the acreage, and create facilities that can safely house fiftybirds.”

“I see,”Daniel says.He senses the injury ofwhat is being said, but he can’t feel it.It’s like cutting your thumb with a fine blade and seeing the little crease in the skin but not yet the blood.“Well, that sounds good.Raptors.”

“What we wanted to avoid at all costs,”Julia says,“is having you learn about this after we’re gone.And then feeling that we’ve done thisagainst you somehow.”

“Because nothing could be further from the truth,”Carl adds.

”Yes,”Daniel says.“Well.Raptors.You’re not planning some early departure scenario, are you?”He sees the confusion on their faces, clarifies.

”You know, ending it all.Suicide.”He raises his voice on that word, star-tles himself.

“Absolutely not,”says Carl.

”But we’re not getting any younger,”Julia says.“Dan, let’s concentrate on what is important here.Ifyour father and I thought you needed money, then ofcourse we would have left every penny we have to you.

But here you are.”She makes an encompassing gesture, indicating his of-fice, the Moroccan carpet on the floor, the glassed-in bookshelves, the antique oak file cabinets.“The Raptor Center is barely making it.”

“We’re assuming you must have salted away a pretty penny from that job in NewYork—or else why would you have retired from it?”

He’ll let that pass.“I just never knew you two were so involved with birds ofprey,”he says.

“It’s recent,”says Carl.“We don’t want this to cause any hard feelings.

Your mother and I have been talking this over for months, and that’s the most important thing, that there be no hard feelings.This is in no way meant to indicate what our feelings are for you, Dan.You’re our son.”

“Our only son,”says Julia.“Our only offspring.Our only family.”

“Are we talking about every penny you have?”asks Daniel.

”And the house,”says Carl.

”Not the contents, however,”Julia says, prodding Carl with one finger.

I couldn’t care less,Daniel thinks.Yet the affront ofthis is unmistakable.

I’m read out of their will?Why are they trying to punish me? Did I miss a Sun-day dinner? Did I fail to rake their leaves, clean their gutters, haul their empties to the recycling center?And then, in an instant, a huge and unhappy thought presents itselfto him:I came back here to be near them.And, in the next in-stant, the thought is gone.

Carl has opened his briefcase and produced a manila folder containing Polaroids ofthe various pieces offurniture and works ofart Carl and Julia have deemed the most valuable oftheir possessions.The grandfa-ther clock, with its long, tarnished pendulum, which Daniel was always forbidden to touch, the spindly nesting table, which he was also not al-lowed to touch, the blue willow setting for twelve, also out ofbounds, the purple and red Persian rug, which he was allowed to walk across, but only without shoes, the antique hat rack upon which Daniel was never permitted to hang his hat—parenthood came late to the Emersons, and when Daniel was born, they did not childprooftheir house, they house-proofed their child.

“Whenever you see something you really and truly want,”Julia says,

“just turn the picture over and put your name on it.”

“I don’t really see the purpose ofthis,”Daniel says.

”We wanted you to have first choice,”says Julia.

”First choice over whom?You don’t have any other children.Do you think the birds are going to want your china cabinet?”

Again, Carl and Julia trade worried glances, gesture back and forth, as ifthey are alone.

“This is exactly why we wanted to get this done when all three ofus could sit calmly together and hash it out,”Carl says.“We don’t want any misunderstandings.”

“The thing is, I don’t want your money.I make a decent living—Iam

charging you for this appointment, by the way.”Daniel laughs but is not surprised when his parents don’t join in.Once, about twenty-five years ago, he made his mother laugh at a knock-knock joke, but he hasn’t been able to get so much as a chuckle out ofeither ofthem since.

“But you see?”says Julia.“That was exactly our thinking.”

“You’re doing fine,”says Carl.“You always have.From the very beginning.I hope you realize what a blessing it was for your mother and I to have a son whom we trusted, who did the right things, who kept out oftrouble, and who was never a danger to himself or to others.Believe me.You may think ofyour mother and me as living in a bell jar, but we see what other people have gone through with their children.Drugs and homosexuality being just the most lurid examples.The great luxury you afforded us was that we never needed to doubt your basic stability.It was such a reliefto know that no matter what, you were always going to be just fine.Your head was always screwed on right.”

“Well, that’s really incredibly moving, Dad,”Daniel says, gathering up the photographs, closing the folder, handing it back to his father.“Maybe you better hang on to these, okay?Who knows? I might disappoint you after all, and you wouldn’t want any ofthis fine furniture falling into the wrong hands.”

Throughout that day he taps his feet beneath his desk while he pretends to listen to clients, and then in court he keeps one hand clenched in his pocket while he enters a plea ofnot guilty in a criminal mischiefcase.

Thoughts ofIris have completely eclipsed any reflections he might have had over being cut out ofhis parents’will.All he can think ofis getting out ofhis office and driving past her house.He likes to see where she lives, the house, its reality pleases him.There is something at once sacred and pornographic, knowing she is in there.Today is Friday, a particularly im-portant day to drive by.It is the day that Hampton, her husband, returns from the city for his weekend at home.The sunset looks like melted ver-milion, the houses and trees are drawn in black ink.He navigates his car down Juniper Street, listening to DinahWashington sing“What a Differ-ence a Day Makes”on the car stereo, and it strikes him that all his life he has been in love with black women—DinahWashington, Billie Holiday, IrmaThomas, IvieAnderson, Ella Fitzgerald, Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith.

Juniper Street is only four blocks long, lined on both sides by singlefamily houses, some with a will toward grandness, others compact Dutch dollhouses, tight little structures painted brown or yellow, with churchy windows and bronze plaques over the doorway announcing the year oftheir construction.As he rolls closer to Iris’s house, he turns off the music, slows to practically a stop.Her house is white clapboard, with a small porch, red shutters, a quartet ofmaple trees on the front lawn.

The windows are dark, they hold a faint reflection ofthe sunset.Iris’s car is not in the driveway, and Daniel, no stranger to her comings and go-ings, in fact having more knowledge ofthem than he would ever admit to anyone else, realizes she has left for the train station to pick up Hamp-ton, whose train is coming in at6:05.Daniel can hardly bear to think of this—imagining her on the platform peering into the windows ofthe train as it pulls in, trying to see ifit’s him, or him, or him, and then there he is, the conquering hero, home from a week ofshuffling expensive pa-per, with his Hugo Boss suit and shaved head, his Mark Cross leather satchel, his Burberry raincoat draped over his shoulders like a cape, here comes the Count ofVenture Capital, and now the inevitable kiss, the child between them, symbol oftheir unbreakable bond, the little wink over Nelson’s head, a promise ofa fuller, more intimate reunion later on: by now Daniel’s mind is a scorpion stinging itselfto death.

He resists speeding over to the train station and instead drives home, out six miles east oftown to Red Schoolhouse Road.It’s Kate’s house, her down payment, but surely his halfofthe monthly mortgage entitles him to feelings ofownership.It is a two-hundred-and-fifty-year-old farmhouse, calm and elegant like Kate herself, with French doors, an im-mense fireplace, ten acres, the remains ofa barn.The dark gray night has healed over the gash ofthe sunset;a wind is coming offthe river.When he pulls into the driveway, he sees an old winter-ravaged Dodge parked next to Kate’s impeccableToyota, and when he lets himself in he sees Ruby in the living room, sitting on the sofa with her baby-sitter.

“Look, Daniel! I have a baby-sitter!”Ruby cries out, with incongruous elation.

The sitter is a high school girl named Mercy.Daniel figures Ruby’s joy must mean she has extracted a promise from Mercy to let her watch TV.He chats with the two girls for a minute, and then goes upstairs to find out where he is going tonight, since as far as he knew there was no plan in place.

He finds Kate in their bedroom, a dark-green room with odd angles, wide plank floors, a Persian rug.She is putting on lipstick and keeping an eye on the portableTV, which has become indispensable to her.The sound is offand she continually checks the set—sometimes in the mir-ror, sometimes turning around to face it—in order to see ifthere’s any-thing on the news about O.J.Simpson, who for the past several months has been on trial for the murder ofhis ex-wife.

“Any news?”asks Daniel, just to be polite.

”Nothing, same old, same old.”

“What ifhe’s innocent, Kate?”

“Yeah, right.”

“You got a sitter for Ruby?”

“You said you wished we went out more.So.Presto!We’re going out.”

“Great.Where we going?”

“Iris Davenport called this afternoon.”She glances at Daniel to see his reaction in the mirror.Nothing.She’s impressed.He’s standing up well to this.“She was trying to arrange something or other for the children.I’m sort ofsurprised she didn’t arrange it with you, that seems to be the way these things get done around here.But, anyhow, she mentioned that she and her husband were going to a concert tonight and the next thing I knew I had volunteered us to go along with them.”She turns toward Daniel, puts her hand against her throat.“Is that all right?And dinner after?”

“I thought you don’t like eating with strangers,”Daniel says, struggling to keep it casual.“I thought you don’t like watching them put food in their mouths.”

Kate’s attention is momentarily seized by something on theTV screen, but it’s another black athlete, walking over a pulsating green landscape oflittle hills with a golfclub over his shoulder.TigerWoods.

How can there be no O.J.news today? Like millions ofothers, Kate has become obsessed with the case—with not only the defendant but the lawyers, the judge, the DNA experts.Stalled on her novel, unable to touch it, often unable even to think about it, she has become facile as a journalist and lately she’s been writing about the case, and since the jury is sequestered and she is not being paid for her objectivity, she has been having no trouble in clamoring for Simpson’s conviction.

“I thought you’d be happy I made these plans,”Kate says.“You mention her constantly.I figured it was time we got to know them, another couple, like actual grown-ups.”

“I mention her constantly?”

“I don’t know, probably not.I’m not trying to give you a hard time.

I’m trying to make you happy.”With rich, shining brown hair, smooth skin, and the scent ofperfume on her, she glides to Daniel’s side.She would like to put her arms around him, but it might seem she was forc-ing the issue.

“You dolikethem, don’t you?”she asks.A surviving bit ofher old southern accent stretches the“i”in“like.”

“I don’t really know him.”

“Do you like her?”

“Iris?”

She gives him a look.Ofcourse Iris, who else are they talking about?

”Yes,”he says.“Sure.Why not? She’s Ruby’s best friend’s mother.

That’s got to be worth something.And she’s nice.She’s funny.”

“Tell me something funny she’s said.It’ll whet my appetite for an evening ofunbridled hilarity.”

“Okay.”He takes a deep breath.“Last spring—”

“Last spring?You have to gothatfar back in time?”

“Actually, it was the summer.She got a mosquito bite, and I guess she was scratching it and scratching it.”His eyes shift away from Kate’s;he realizes he is talking himself into a hole.“And she turned the bite into a sore, you know how that happens.And so she took a pen and wrote‘ouch ouch ouch ouch’in a circle all around the bite.”

“That’s it? She wrote ouch on her arm?”

“You know what, Kate? I think we should call them and say we can’t make it.”

She wouldn’t mind doing just that, but she’s already set her course.

“Nonsense,”she says.She holds her pearls out to him and he comes be-hind her to fasten them.In her scoop-necked dress, Kate’s collarbones look as sturdy as handlebars.

“You look nice,”Daniel says.He seems to mean it.He even touches her hair.“You look beautiful.”

She cannot fully believe that Daniel has embarked on some flirtation.

It contradicts not only her trust in him but her sense ofhim.She met him when she was sick to death ofeccentric, neurotic men.She had a year-old baby and a busted-up marriage, a successful novel and a contract for a sec-ond, and all she wanted from a man was clarity, kindness, and dependabil-ity.She distrusted despair, had an aversion to any kind ofdomestic drama.

Daniel back then had been a lawyer in the firm that represented Kate’s publishing house and he, too, was recently out ofa shabby affair, this one with a woman who turned out to have a hair-trigger temper and a pen-chant for violence.Kate and Daniel used to joke with each other about be-ing the last normal people on earth, and the joke turned into a kind of emotional contract;they were promising each other affection with tran-quility, a life ofmeasured gestures, respect for boundaries.It would be a levelheaded alliance;they would be Swiss bankers ofthe heart.

“I can’t believe you did this, put this…this evening together,”he issaying.

She watches his face, carefully.Despite her beliefthat he would never actually have an affair, he seems to be a man who wants to take a jour-ney.He hasn’t booked passage, he doesn’t have a ticket, he doesn’t have the guts.Kate is certain that he has not betrayed her.It hasn’t gone that far, not yet.It’s still an affair ofthe mind.He thinks a love affair will res-cue him.From what?Yet in a way, that no-idea-what’s-wrong sort oflife might be exactly what he wants to be rescued from.Kate feels curious but removed.She has decided to let it play out.

She would like to take a closer look at Iris.Lately, he has been mentioning her, telling stories that have no point except to give him an oc-casion to say“Iris.”Kate, thus far, fails to see the appeal.Iris is ten pounds too thin, fidgety, psychologically evasive but physically a littletoopres-ent, with a cat-on-a-hot-tin-roofquality to her, a woman used to being sought after, loved, but not really satisfied, used to adulation, a daddy’s girl, perhaps.

Ofcourse, her blackness is a part ofwhat draws Daniel to her, Kate is certain ofthis.All those blues records, all that soul music, and even gospel music, the man listens to Sam Cooke singing about Jesus and gets tears in his eyes, though he himself has no more beliefin Christ than he has in the Easter bunny.He must have been preparing himself for this all along.Getting the soundtrack down for his big movie spectacular.The story ofhis life taking shape, the story ofhimself as a great romantic hero, crossing the color line.How passé! How pathetic!As ifgetting involved with anAfrican-American could be the solution to his problems.As ifit would give him something to believe in.The poor little unloved son sud-denly draping himself in three hundred years ofanother people’s history, the invisible man taking shape beneath the swaddling ofblack bandages.

“Do I have time for a shower?”Daniel asks.

The night is chilly.A stiffwesterly wind blows through the trees and black clouds are snapping at the moon.A steady procession ofconcert-goers march into St.John’s, where tonight the Leyden Musical Society is performing theMessiah.To Kate, even after three years in Leyden, it’s a procession ofstrangers, but Daniel knows most ofthe crowd by name.

She watches him waving, smiling at whoever makes eye contact.She is often exhausted by his outwardness.His smile can grate on her as ifit were a cough.Kate realizes that in the vast literature ofwifely com-plaints this doesn’t register with great intensity, but Daniel smiles too easily and she doesn’t care for it.The man smiles while he sleeps.

Yet even as he smiles, he’s craning his neck, on the lookout for Iris and Hampton.Kate doesn’t mean to think in racial terms, but it seems to her that black people are always running late.Maybe it’s a bit ofag-gression toward whites, maybe with each other they’re as punctual as the six o’clock news.She watches Daniel, swiveling his head around like an adulterous owl.

“Daniel?”She pats him on the arm.“You look a little crazy.”

“I do?”He blinks, as ifjust awakened.And then they see them, moving quickly along ManchesterAvenue, hurrying, arm in arm.

“Hello!”Daniel calls out, eagerly raising his hand as ifhe were a schoolboy with the right answer.Iris is wearing a gray overcoat, black pants, boots, a kind ofAfrican hat.Everything seems a couple sizes too large, she is like some goofy kid wearing her mother’s clothes.Not so with the husband.Hampton—his skin pale toffee, his emanation of coiled energy, his aura ofwealth—is wearing a sumptuous, practically edible-looking cashmere coat, a paisley silk scarfwith tassels.He has those round little glasses, steel framed, gentle, scholarly, that Kate iden-tifies as deliberately reassuring, nonsexual, a little eunuchy, really, the signifying eyewear ofthe black professional.

Daniel kisses Iris’s cheek, and Hampton, seeing this, plants a quick kiss on Kate, with all the tenderness ofa clerk stamping a bill paid.

The four ofthem make their way into the church.St.John’s is for Leyden’s upper-class Episcopalians, and for those who like to pray with their betters.It’s chilly, Spartan, like a lodge high in theAustrianAlps.All that woodwork, the fresh white flowers, and the Episcopalian flag that reminds her ofthe Red Cross.She and Daniel, and then Iris and Hamp-ton, find places in a back pew.The orchestra is already tuning up as they arrange themselves.Daniel and Iris seem to be intent on not making the slightest eye contact.

Kate tries to keep her attention riveted upon the orchestra and the chorus throughout the concert.The conductor is Ethan Greenblatt, pres-ident ofMarlowe College, a handsome young academic superstar with an explosion ofcurly hair and a fussy bow tie.He is pushing the musicians through the piece at breakneck speed, as ifafraid ofdetaining the audi-

ence past its attention span.But from time to time, Kate must glance at Daniel.His eyes are closed, but she’s sure he’s awake.Hampton takes Iris’s hand, brings it to his lips, while she stares intently ahead.And then, Kate sees Daniel glancing at Iris.Their eyes meet for a moment, but it has the impact ofcymbals crashing.It is a shocking, agitating thing to see.It’s like being in a store with someone and watching them steal something.

Afterward, the four ofthem walk to the GeorgeWashington Inn, where Iris has made dinner reservations.The Inn is redolent with Colo-nial history—low, beamed ceilings, wormy old tavern tables, an im-mense blackened fireplace.A high school girl serves them a basket of rolls, then comes back to fill their water glasses.She pours Hampton’s last and accidentally fills it to the very top;in fact, a little ofit laps onto the table.“Oops,”she says, but Hampton looks away.His jaw is suddenly rigid.Iris touches his knee, pats it, as ifto calm him down.With her other hand, she is dabbing the little dime-sized puddle with her napkin.

A moment later, a waiter appears to take their drink orders.Daniel and Kate are used to this waiter, middle-aged, vain, and formal.Hamp-ton, however, sees the waiter’s extreme tact as an extension ofthe bus-girl’s spilling his water, and he orders a vodka martini in a surly voice.

”UseAbsolut,”he says.“I’ll know ifthe bartender uses the house brand.”

Iris looks down at her lap;when she raises her gaze again she sees Daniel is looking at her, smiling.It startles her into smiling back.The two ofthem seem so happy to be gazing at each other, and Kate feels like Princess Kitty standing at the edge ofthe room and noticing the joy that floods their faces whenVronsky’s andAnna Karenina’s eyes meet.Kate wonders exactly how far along these two really are.Is it too late to stop them?

“So, Hampton,”Kate says,“tell me.I hear all about Iris from Daniel, but nothing about you.You’re in the city most ofthe time?”

“I come up here on the weekend,”Hampton says.“During the workweek, I stay at the apartment where we used to live before Iris got into Marlowe.”

“It’s a beautiful apartment,”Iris says.She glances at Hampton, who smiles at her.

“So what keeps you down in the city all week?”Kate asks.

”I’m co–managing director oftheAtlantic Fund,”Hampton says.

”He’s an investment banker,”Iris says, in the same anxious-to-please tone in which she said their apartment was beautiful.To Kate, Iris sounds like a woman whose husband has complained about how she treats him in public.

“TheAtlantic Fund provides capital toAfrican-American business,”

Hampton says.“It’s sometimes difficult for black-owned businesses to get what they need from the white banking structure.”He cranes his neck, looks for the waiter.“Just like it’s hard to get a white waiter to bring you a drink.”He breathes out so hard his cheeks pufffor a moment.“I’ve never come here, and now I know why.”

“Have we really been waiting that long?”asks Kate.“It seems like we just sat down.”She looks to Daniel for confirmation, but all Daniel can manage is a shrug.He is on a plane and he has just heard something in the pitch ofthe engine’s roar that makes him feel the flight is doomed.

“God, that music was so wonderful,”Iris says.

”The first time I heard Handel’sMessiah,I was four years old,”Hampton says, his eyes on Kate.“My grandmother was in a chorus that per-formed it for Richard Nixon, at theWhite House.”This comment is in keeping with remarks he’s been making since they left the church.Al-ready they’d heard references to his grandfather’s Harvard roommate, his great-grandfather’s Presbyterian mission in the Congo, his mother’s spending five thousand dollars on haute couture in Paris when she was eleven years old, his aunt Dorothy’s short engagement to Colin Powell, the suspicious fire at theWelles vacation compound on Martha’sVine-yard.He boasts about his lineage in a way that Kate thinks would simply not be allowed from a white person.

“Thurgood Marshall was a friend ofthe family and he was there, too, ofcourse.Unfortunately, he fell asleep after ten minutes.Gramma said they all sang extra loud to cover Justice Marshall’s snoring.”

Kate wonders ifHampton is trying to put Daniel on alert.He, too, must sense what’s happening.She has to admit that she is enjoying this foursome more than she’d dared hope.It captures her imagination in some creepy, achey way, like sucking on a tooth that’s just starting to die.

“Is this the same grandmother who played the cello?”she asks.Maybe

if you thought a little less about your grandmother’s pedigree and a little more about your wife, she wouldn’t be squirming in her chair and eyeing my boyfriend.

“No, the cellist wasAbigailWelles, ofBoston, my father’s mother.The singing grandma was Lucille Cox, ofAtlanta, on my mother’s side.”

“I have many Coxes in my family,”Kate says.“On my mother’s side, many ofthem from Georgia, too.”

There is a briefsilence, and then Kate says what she guesses must be passing through everyone’s mind.“Ofcourse, there’s a chance that one ofmyCoxes held one ofyour Coxes in slavery.”

“In that case,”says Daniel, lifting his wine glass,“dinner’s on us.”

For the first time that evening, Hampton smiles.Beaming, his face grows younger.His teeth are large, even, and very white, and he casts his eye downward, as ifthe moment’s pleasure makes him shy.Kate can imagine the moment when Iris first saw that smile, how it must have drawn her in and made her want to fathom the secret cave ofselfthat was his smile’s source.

“Hampton,”Kate says.“That’s an interesting name.”

“My family’s full ofHamptons,”he says.“We come from Hampton,

Virginia.A few ofus attended Hampton University, back when it was Hampton Normal andAgriculture Institute.”

“Hampton Hawes,”says Daniel.

”What?”says Hampton.

”He’s a jazz piano player, West Coast.”

“Daniel knows everything about jazz,”says Kate.“And blues, and rhythm and blues.”

The waitress arrives and presents them with yellowfin tuna, coq au vin, filet mignon, risotto funghi.“Look,”says Iris,“everything looks so good!”

“Is that tuna?”Hampton asks, peering at Iris’s plate.

Every marriage, Kate thinks, seems to have one person wanting what’s on the other’s plate.

Iris smiles, but she doesn’t look pleased.“Do you want some?”

“Okay, a taste.”He watches while she cuts her sesame-encrusted tuna in halfand then transports it carefully to his plate, next to his charbroiled slab ofsteak and French fries and homemade coleslaw.He doesn’t offer her so much as a morsel ofhis food.

“Iris doesn’t share my interest in family traditions,”Hampton says, cutting into his steak.

“All I ever said is that sometimes they can be a little limiting,”says Iris, trying not to plead, but Kate can tell she would like to.“InAmerica you can make your own history.”

“Dream on, my sweet,”says Hampton.

”All right, then I will.And in the meantime, can we just relax and enjoy being alive?”

“So you work onWall Street?”Kate asks.

”Does that surprise you?”asks Hampton.“That I’m an investmentbanker?”

“Yes,”she says,“I thought maybe you were a tap dancer.”

Hampton smiles, points his finger at Kate.“That’s funny,”he says, instead oflaughing.

“I wrote a piece last year about the stock exchange,”Kate says.“I love all those men crawling over each other and shouting out numbers as if their lives were hanging by a thread.And then the final bell rings and everyone cheers and goes out for drinks.I loved the whole thing, in-cluding the bell and the drinks.”

“That’s not what I do.But I’d like to read your article.”

“Oh no, please, no.The only way I can churn that crap out is to tell myselfthat absolutely no one will ever set eyes on it.”She catches the waitress’s eye and gestures with a twirl ofthe finger:more drinks over here.“It’s just to pay the bills.And wrap fish.”

“Do you mostly write about financial topics?”Hampton asks.

”What I’m supposed to be doing is working on my next novel, but that’s been the case for quite a while.So in the meanwhile, editors call me up and I give them whatever they want.It’s amazing how easily the stuffcomes when you don’t really have your heart in it.Right now, I’m doing a piece about the O.J.trial and about this woman artist calling her-selfIngrid Newport.”

“What kind ofartist is she?”Hampton asks.

”She’s sewn up her vagina,”Kate says.She can practicallyhear

Daniel’s heart sinking.He worries about her when she drinks.And then he does something that strikes her asintolerable.He actually looks over at Iris and shrugs.

“They keep on assigning me these sexual mutilation pieces,”Kate says.“It’s becoming sort ofmy specialty.My little calling card.”Is this putting Iris in her place? Kate has no idea.Iris may be one ofthose rare monsters:a person ofunshakable sexual confidence.“I tell them,‘Hey guys, how about a piece about the reemergence ofthe lobotomy as an accepted psychiatric practice,’but, no, they say,‘What we really want is fifeen hundred words on Peter Peterson, that guy in Dover, Delaware, who crucified his own penis.’They all tell me I write so well about gen-der issues, by which they really mean sex.I guess I should be pleased.No one ever said I did anything well when it came to sex.”Kate laughs.“But now I’m getting a lot ofO.J.assignments, so that’s good.Have you all been following the case?”

No one’s taking the bait on that one.Getting this crowd to talk about O.J.would be like trying to convince them to take offtheir clothes right there in the restaurant.Kate feels sour and self-righteous, the way you do when you seem to be the only person willing to face something ugly.

Iris’s eyes are locked on her meal.She seems to be hurrying to finish it before Hampton tucks into it again.Kate watches her hands as they del-icately maneuver her knife and fork.She finds her cute but hardly irre-sistible.Lean body, broad shoulders, big behind.Kate feels sorry for black people with freckles, it’s like they’re getting the worst ofboth worlds.

“You know what we should have done?”says Daniel, his voice bright silver.“Kept the kids together, with just one baby-sitter.”

“Wasn’t I lucky to have found someone like Daniel?”Kate announces.

“When my marriage broke up and I was left with my kid, I thought I’d be alone forever.But Daniel’s a better parent than I am.”She waits for Daniel to contradict her, but he doesn’t.“Well, maybe notbetter,but he is so good to Ruby.”

“She’s a great kid,”Daniel says softly.

”She is,”says Iris.

”And she so loves Nelson,”Daniel says.His face colors, and he looks to Kate for relief.“Doesn’t she? How many times has she talked about him? Right?”

“Kids can fall in love,”Kate says.“In fact, in childhood, we may be at our highest capacity to just go head over heels for another person.I was in love with a little boy when I was five years old.A little black boy with the perfect little black boy name:Leroy.Leroy Sinclair.”She signals the waiter for more wine.In for a penny.“His mother cleaned the little med-ical arts building where my father had his office.He was a real butterball, Leroy.Just as fat as a tick, but with the most charming, lazy smile, a real summer-on-the-Mississippi smile.He wore overalls and high-topped sneakers.His mother had to take him to work and apparently she fed that poor boy sweets all through the day to keep him quiet.I used to go to Daddy’s office every Saturday and Mrs.Sinclair—”

“You called her Mrs.Sinclair?”Hampton asks.

”Not at the time.We called her Irma.She weighed two pounds, shoes and all.”

“Poor Leroy,”says Iris.

”I used to read to Leroy.I was precocious.I’d bring a book every Saturday and read to him while Daddy worked in his office, two hours of paperwork, nine-thirty to eleven-forty-five, every Saturday, to the minute.I used to read Leroy these bedtime books, right there in the mid-dle ofthe day, sitting on the inside staircase ofthis little medical arts building out on Calhoun Boulevard.And Leroy had all this candy his mother gave him, stuffed in his pockets, little red-and-white mints, but-terscotch sucking candies, all fancy wrapped…”

“She probably took them from one ofthe houses she cleaned during the week,”Iris says.

“Yes, I suppose she did.Stolen sweets.What could be better?”She narrows her eyes, lets Iris draw her own damn conclusions.“I read him Goodnight, Moon,and he put his head right in my lap and closed his eyes and I patted and rocked him and he pretended to fall asleep.And when I was finished with whatever I was reading, I kissed the palm ofmy hand and pressed it against his cheek, over and over, hand to my lips, hand to his cheek.And I remember thinking:I love Leroy.I love Leroy Sinclair.

And just saying those words put me into a kind ofhypnotic trance.”

The high school girl has cleared the plates away.The waiter hovers over to the side, waiting for a break in the conversation.

“And then one day I saw my father talking to Mrs.Sinclair,”Kate is saying,“and I knew she would never be allowed to bring Leroy to work with her again.And I was right.The next time I saw him, maybe two years later, he was on his way to his school and I was with a couple ofmy silly, awful little girlfriends from Beaumont Country Day School, and I called to him across the street—Hey, Leroy—and he just looked at me as ifI was the most ridiculous thing he had ever seen, and he didn’t say a word.

But whose fault was it?We were both caught in something so large, and so terrible.His people came over in chains and my people sat on the porch sipping gin.Something that begins that badly can never end well…”

Kate looks around the table, smiling.

”How about you, Hampton?”she says.“Did you ever fall in love with someone not ofyour race?”Ifhe finds this offensive he gives no indica-tion—but Kate quickly looks away from him, throws her slightly bleary gaze first at Iris, and finally at Daniel.“Anyone?”